


that which molds us from the clay

by Ancalime



Category: The Pretender
Genre: Family, Female Protagonist, Gen, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:03:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime/pseuds/Ancalime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Debbie's known her life is a little stranger than average since grade school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that which molds us from the clay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bantha fodder (banthafodder)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/banthafodder/gifts).



Debbie's known her life is a little stranger than average since grade school. Half the kids in her homeroom class were from "broken families," single or widowed parents, or third and fourth marriages, sure, but every last one of _them_ had normal boring parents who worked for normal boring companies doing normal boring jobs.

The other half -- her half -- didn't. Their parents, one or both, worked for the Centre. And sometimes they would simply...vanish.

**

Georgia: boring and hot. Debbie hates it. They stay there for almost two months, living in a hotel for long-term travelers, and Debbie reads every book her dad had tossed in the back seat of the car, even the boring textbook on C++. It puts her to sleep so many times that she starts keeping a tally on the scrap of notebook paper that serves as her bookmark. It's a really boring book. She doesn't get how her dad ever stuck with it long enough to be any good.

When she asks him (fifty-seven tally marks later), he laughs and tells her taking classes and doing homework helps. She makes a face at him and gives up on the textbook long enough to persuade her dad to take her to a used book store. She lingers over the new books her dad lets her get, drawing them out, rereading the good passages, but when she's done with them all, the C++ textbook still waits for her.

Ninety-one tally marks from when she started, she asks her dad about one of the small example programs the book includes, and after over an hour of discussion they realize it's long past time to order pizza for dinner.

**

Wisconsin: boring and cold. Debbie hates it, the whole year they stay there, except the snow days. She hates her fake name, she hates her school, she hates that her classmates are all dumb as rocks. She hates that she misses her school in Delaware because it had smarter kids -- because the Centre attracts talent. She reads through math class, does her math homework in science class, and adds twenty percent to the length of all her English class assignments, except the speeches.

At least the school has a library full of books she's never read before, and there's more snow than she'd ever seen in Delaware in her entire life. It transforms everything, smooth mounds where cars used to be, muddy soccer fields hidden beneath knee high sparkling whiteness. Her dad helps her build a snowman six feet tall, and then a smaller one next to it. She donates a hat to the smaller one and steals one of her dad's ties for the larger.

**

Wyoming: boring and green. Debbie hates it. Too many small towns, too much time spent stuck in the car, too many miles of scenery looking just like the previous mile. She looks out the passenger-side window as the car tops a pass and stares at the forest spread out below, an irregular green blanket of trees. Miles and miles with no city, no streetlights, no homes -- it's all utterly alien to her.

The sun warm across her body, she yawns at the trees and proceeds to ignore them in favor of her book until the car comes to a halt. The noise of the drive stays with her, even as her dad is telling her to get out so they can use the restrooms before the geyser goes off. Geyser? She glances at her dad, catches him checking his watch, follows his gaze to the large wooden sign that announces the next eruption of Old Faithful.

The wooden benches and absence of any visible technological cause do nothing to ease her suspicions that Old Faithful is somehow controlled -- that somewhere there's a curtain, and behind it a man, pulling a lever once every 90 minutes.

After they watch the geyser erupt, her dad takes her out on one of the long wooden walkways through the sprawling system of hot springs. Out beyond the sound of human conversation from the other visitors and the clatter of feet on timber, the landscape breathes and whispers to itself in a way that she's never heard in Delaware. And when they reach the Grand Prismatic Spring she forgets to be cynical and stares, drinking in the bluest blue that she has ever seen in her life.

She stands there drinking it in and the first complete thought that crosses her mind is that just like everything else about the Centre, even the name "Blue Cove" is nothing but a pretense.

**

Delaware: only boring on the good days. Debbie hates it, even though she's not bored today. She's thinking about how much her dad would disapprove of Miss Parker sitting her down and talking to her about guns, but also how much he worries about her. She knows she could do worse than try to be like Miss Parker, even in her dad's eyes.

Miss Parker strips down the semi-automatic pistol and reassembles it in seconds, her fingers accurate with the force of long-practiced routine. She repeats it, slower, glancing from her hands up to Debbie's face and back to make sure she is following. Debbie follows her blood-red fingernails, like markers pointing to the next part, the next step. Debbie has seen the old women working as secretaries at the Centre typing away with their huge fake plastic nails and wondered how they managed it, but Miss Parker handles the gun as if it is nothing more than hazardous to her manicure than a bolt of fabric.

When Debbie has watched Miss Parker disassemble and reassemble the gun, and nodded along to the safety lecture, Miss Parker hands her the gun, casually, almost tossing it to her. A small noise of surprise escapes her lips and she almost drops it, the weight unexpected and unfamiliar in her hands.

Miss Parker holds the clip up for her to see -- _it's safe, it's not loaded --_ and tells her to point the gun at the wall and pull the trigger. Debbie curls both hands around the pistol's grip and carefully aims for _The Collected Works of Shakespeare._ She flinches when she pulls the trigger, even though nothing happens but a soft click, and Miss Parker is smiling when she opens her eyes again.

She learns how to hold the gun, to make sure the safety is on or off, to check if it's loaded or unloaded and how to load the clip into it. Miss Parker is a stern teacher, but not unfair, and rewards her when they're done with her choice of books from the shelves along the wall, to take with her when her dad picks her up.

It's a parting gift, Miss Parker tells her, and so she understands when her dad doesn't come until late at night, and they hurry out to the car. The backseat is buried under clothes and electronics from their house.

"Were you a good girl for Miss Parker today?"

"Yes, Daddy, I was good." She rolls her eyes and digs through her backpack for a book.


End file.
